


In the aftermath

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [37]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23718853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: The team responds to the events of the previous night in their various ways.
Series: Mikkel's Story [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	In the aftermath

Duty can be neither delayed nor denied.

_I made a mistake, yes, and Tuuri is paying for it. But she is alive and so are the other four, and we cannot count on another miracle to keep them that way. If we are to survive, we must all do our duty. No matter the guilt I bear, **I** must do **my** duty._

_And I will._

Mikkel took a deep breath, straightened, looked around for the other members of the team. Lalli, returned from scouting, stood nearby – but not too nearby – alert, on guard, doing his duty. Emil, heavily armed and carrying the kitten, prowled around looking for live grosslings. Close to the tank only the humans had survived, but farther out there were grosslings still living, burned, maimed, menacing … suffering. Sigrun was leaning against the tank, staring at the ground; she required his attention. The non-immunes inside the tank, however, were his first responsibility.

He climbed into the tank, muttered to Reynir, “Put on your mask,” and led him to the sleeping quarters. Behind him, he heard Torbjörn on the radio telling Tuuri, “I'm so sorry ...” The medic in him felt guilty that the patient had had to break the news, but the man in him was relieved that he had not had to do it, which thought of course made him feel more guilty for his selfishness. Firmly squelching the emotion, he efficiently stripped Reynir's bunk, passed the bedclothes to him, rolled up the thin mattress and, arms wrapped about the bundle, led the way to the back compartment.

 _Fool! I should have opened this door as I passed it. I'm slipping … I must pay better attention … we must all pay attention if we are to survive._ Since both men's hands were full, he had to put down the mattress in the least filthy nearby spot in order to open the door. Brushing off the ashes with distaste, he spread the mattress with the grimy side down, and gestured for Reynir to make it up. Mournfully, wordlessly, the Icelander set to work. This would never do.

“Reynir, stop acting so gloomy. We know nothing for certain, and a low morale will only distract us.” Those words were meant for himself as well. “For now, we should act under the assumption that Tuuri is well.” Pulling out a roll of duct tape – duct tape had, of course, survived the end of the world – he began to seal up seams between the front wall of the compartment and the walls. As the expedition was being organized, the wall had been hastily added so as to form two compartments, allowing possibly contaminated explorers to be separated from non-immune Tuuri, and the rushed job had been less than careful. If she was indeed infected, her very breath would become a threat to the other non-immune some forty-eight or so hours after infection. “And for your protection, you will stay on this side of the vehicle, and Tuuri will stay on hers. When you need to go outside, let me know, and I will make sure the two of you do not cross paths.”

“Um, so … we're _really_ acting under the assumption that she's not okay, then?”

“One can act under two assumptions at once.”

Leaving the younger man to contemplate his new quarters, Mikkel set out to check on Sigrun, who was leaning morosely against the tank, holding her arm in pain.

“How's the arm?” Receiving only a grunt in answer, “When something is wrong, you need to tell me. When did the wounds start bothering you in that fashion?”

“I don't know, a couple of days ago or something. I don't keep a journal.”

"Allow me to examine it," he half-asked, half-ordered. Gaze still fixed on the ground, she slipped off her jacket, offered her arm wordlessly. Pulling up the sleeve, he found that the flesh around the wound was an angry red, swollen, and hot to his gentle touch: with pain, the four classic symptoms of infection. 

“An infection has clearly built up. We should still be able to combat it with medication, better late than never. But sooner would have been better.”

“Hrmph.”

“Are you taking this seriously?” he asked severely. “You're not alone on this mission. When you neglect your own well-being, you also risk the safety of everyone else involved.”

“I got it! I'm not an idiot! I understand when something is my fault! But it won't change what happened!”

She stalked off, leaving Mikkel alone with his own guilt. Through the open door behind him, he heard Tuuri, still on the radio: “ _Sigh._ Okay, let me speak with Onni now.”

“Uh …” That was Torbjörn again. “I – I don't know how to tell you this, but … we think your brother was struck by lightning last night … somehow … inside our house.”

“He clearly wasn't hit by lightning.” That thick accent had to indicate Taru.

“He's in stable condition, but unresponsive. I'm _so_ sorry.”

“Oh … Good!” Mikkel was roused from his thoughts to turn and stare into the tank at Tuuri's response.

“ _Huh?_ ” That was several voices, and Mikkel's might have been one of them.

“N—no, no, I didn't mean that Onni being 'hit by lightning' was good! It's just that … he doesn't handle worrying news well. It's better if he doesn't know. Actually, if he wakes up, please don't tell him. I'll tell him.”

 _Bang!_ Emil and the kitten had found a live troll. Looking up, Mikkel saw Sigrun stalking up to the Swede. “Are you still not done cleaning up?”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“Give me the cat! I'll scan the place twice as fast.”

“No, _I'm_ doing _my_ job. And your yelling is scaring her!”

Alarmed by the angry raised voices, the kitten struggled from his arms and fled to … Lalli. The scout, who had never wanted anything to do with the feline, muttered something irritable to her, but then picked her up and buried his face in her fur. Sigrun turned on her heel and walked away toward the surrounding trees while Emil looked around and began the slower process of scanning for live grosslings with only his own senses.

Watching all this, Mikkel sighed. It would take a lot to pull the team back together.

_What was Sigrun thinking? Her body is a **weapon**. If a soldier under my command had neglected his weapon like that … But then, she isn't a soldier, is she? She's a troll-hunter. What did she say about hunting? That they always visited the sauna after a hunt? Hunts are short. This situation – week after week under constant threat – must be entirely new to her. Entirely new to all of them, in fact._

_Her body is a weapon, yes, but not a rifle she can clean or a dagger she can sharpen. To care for it in this situation, she would need help. She would have to ask **me** for help. Would a troll-hunter ask another troll-hunter for help like that in the middle of a hunt? Maybe not. Probably not. She'd take care of it herself as best she could and just keep going … And that's what she did here: did her best to care for it and kept going. I must talk to her about that. Her troll-hunting habits can't work here, now. Here she must be a soldier._

_She must accept … we both must accept … that we made mistakes for which Tuuri is paying the price. Not the only mistakes last night, either. And yet … in the heat of battle, massively outnumbered, perhaps this would have happened anyway. Or even worse; perhaps something else could have slipped through that killed both of them._

_I must talk to her. She can't … we can't … function well while flaying ourselves with guilt.  
_

The talk would have to wait, however. Lalli had scouted a path for them, and they had to get moving.

* * *

Moving was easier said than done. Attempting to drive, Tuuri found that neither tread responded to the controls: the troll had ripped through the wiring on its way into the tank. Sigrun took charge of Reynir, allowing him to spend some time outside his tiny quarters, while Lalli stood guard and Mikkel, Emil, and Tuuri worked to repair the damage.

Half a dozen severed wires in her hands, Tuuri shook her head, telling Mikkel, “Those don't look like the right ones either. Do you see any others?” Looking down into the hole, seeing an abundance of broken wires, all much alike to his eyes, Mikkel obediently taped his current handful of wires to the side of the hole, and fished around inside some more.

“I'm sorry!” she cried in frustration, “This is going to take so long to fix!”

“It's quite all right,” Mikkel told her patiently. “It's quite all right. We'll approach this one step at a time, and it will come together.”

“Can I leave?” Emil asked, “I have no idea about any of this.” Mikkel dismissed him with a wave and pulled up another wire. As that too was rejected, he taped it down and tried again. And again. And again.

“That one!” she said triumphantly, and he passed her a wire identical to those she had rejected. With the first connection made, the next followed fairly quickly. Hours later, every connection made, Tuuri tested the tank and confirmed it to be repaired, but with the sun already setting, it was impossible to depart.

_How did she know which wires to join? They all looked the same to me … her records say she has “a mage's touch with machinery”; is this what they meant? I didn't believe it … but then I didn't believe in magic. Not then. But magic is real, I know it since I saw the firebird. Maybe she really is a mage, like her cousin and brother._

__

__

_Her brother. Onni, the Finnish mage. Onni who was “struck by lightning” inside the house, the very night that the Finnish firebird saved us. That is not a coincidence. Somehow, somehow, Onni summoned the firebird. I owe him my life, for what little that is worth, and the lives of the others, which are so infinitely precious. Somehow, somewhere, someday, I will repay him._

And perhaps Mikkel too had a touch of magic in his soul, because he was right and he did repay Onni one day, but that was much later, in such a place and under such circumstances as he could never have imagined.


End file.
